Hugh Boyd Trojans' powerful two-way lineman Dylan Roach might be the strongest high school football player in Canada.Gerry Kahrmann / PNG

On a recent morning, before his alarm clock even had a chance to wake him from the kind of sound sleep every growing 16-year-old needs, a Grade 12 high school football player from Richmond was brought out of his slumber by a different kind of sound.

“So many of my friends were messaging me,” laughs Dylan Roach, a two-way lineman with the Hugh Boyd Trojans of being awoken by his phone. “I just thought ‘Oh my God.’”

The previous day, the 6-foot-3, 290-pound Roach, who as a passion for the weight room, asked a teammate to shoot a short video clip of him deadlifting 675 pounds.

By morning, the clip that was picked by U.S. online sports giant Bleacher Report, had gone viral and at last report had garnered about a half-million views on that site alone.

How strong is the Hercules of Canadian high school football?

To put it in perspective, he is already on par with, or better than, the most powerful linemen in Canadian university football, which has a five-year window of eligibility.

In a 2015 ESPN post on the strongest college football players in the U.S., the player topping the list was Baylor defensive lineman Andrew Billings, now a rookie with the Cincinnati Bengals. The story noted that Billings had set a Texas high school weight-lifting record with an 805-pound squat, 500-pound bench press and a 705-pound deadlift for a 2,010-pound total.

Roach isn’t quite in that neighbourhood, but for a kid whose environment can’t come close to football-mad Texas, he’s not far off, with a 600-pound squat, a 420-pound bench press, and a 675-pound deadlift for a 1,695-pound total.

Last year, while working at a furniture warehouse, Roach noticed three men struggling to lift a large freezer unit, so he simply walked up to them, picked it up and asked them where they wanted it.

Of course brute strength is only going to take you so far.

“Technique is just as important as strength,” says Roach, a three-year starter who has started to embrace the intricacies that come with his roles as a dual tackle. “Anyone can be strong, but if you don’t use it the right way on the field, it’s useless. I am learning all of that from my coaches.”

In the meantime, he and the rest of his teammates along both lines have done some genuinely heavy lifting this season.

Back in 2013, the season before Roach joined the team as a starter, Hugh Boyd had a winless 0-7 campaign. Heading into Friday’s regular-season finale in Nanaimo against struggling John Barsby, the Trojans are 6-1 overall and 4-1 in B.C. double-A football’s tough Western Conference.

“His strength is just a freak-of-nature kind of thing,” says Hugh Boyd head coach Bill Haddow. “He is just powerful all the way through. But the most telling thing is just how much he loves to lift and get to these new levels. The most amazing thing? It’s how well he moves for having such a big frame.”

The easiest thing might be to forget that he’s still just a kid who doesn’t turn 17 until December.

“Guys would see the video and they’d post things like ‘He’s not 16, he’s 25. Look at all those tattoos,’” remembers Roach of the comments he read. “People can say whatever they want. It doesn’t faze me. I am just going to go back into the weight room and work as hard as I can.”

His tattoos?

Roach asked his dad for permission first, then proceeded to get a few, including that of a lion.

“That’s for being the king of the jungle, wanting to be the best at anything you set your mind to,” says Roach, who adds that he’s looking into both collegiate and junior football options for next season.

He’s challenging himself to be the best he can on a pretty steep learning curve, but his strength, enhanced through hard work, has just come naturally.

It wasn’t too long ago, back in the eighth grade, when he stepped into a weight room for the first time.

“All the other guys were trying to (deadlift) like 150 pounds or so,” the teenage Hercules remembers. “The first time I tried it, I did 300. That’s when I said to myself, ‘I’m pretty strong.’”

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